First time swimming!

Okay, so this happened last Saturday but I wanted to tell about it anyway.

For our last ward group Family Home Evening we decided that we'd go to Green Canyon; a nearby hot springs swimming pool. We borrowed an infant inner tube from Shara's parents and a water diaper from some friends and headed out. First bump in the road: We found that the inner tube had been attacked by cats and had numerous holes. We then borrowed one from people in our group who had an extra.

We decided the best plan would be that I'd get ready first then hold Brandon and wait while Shara got ready. I decided to test the water and and headed over before Shara was done. I sat on the stairs into the pool and as soon as they touched the water he held them up and seemed unhappy about his feet getting wet. He soon got so distracted by all the commotion and he relaxed his legs. I figured I had found a good process and I continued to gradually move down the steps. Each time he would get concerned then get distracted until his hands touched the water. He was sure he wasn't going to let that happen and held them up as long as he had stamina. He finally decided tired muscles was worse than wet hands and carefully touched the water. I could see him thinking "Hey, this is kind of cool!" as he started hitting the water and making large splashes for an eight month old, not even caring about getting his face wet.

When Shara came out we transferred Brandon to the inner tube without any protest from him - as long as he could watch the people playing. Half an hour later he started to fuss so we grabbed a rubber duck from his toy bag he was fine again. After about an hour we found he was indeed only tolerating the experience because he reached his tolerance limit. Shara held him and we stayed for about another half hour longer but Brandon wasn't wanting any more of it. He wasn't crying but his muscles were tense he was stiff and he was sucking his pacifier so hard it was indenting into his face. You could even hear the sucking sounds over the noise of the pool. We decided it was time to relieve the poor kid and headed home. He very quickly gave in to sleep after such an exhausting experience and was gone for the rest of the night.